TC30 losses power when warm

[Railroad Jim]

My TC30 suddenly started losing power when it is warm. When first started it works fine. Once it has warmed up it will begin to lose power and the RPMs slowly drop. It will finally get to the point that any load will kill the engine. It will always restart, but when put in gear and any load is put on it it will again die. Let it cool down and it will again run fine until it gets warm.

This tractor has the HST transmission.

I have replaced the fuel filter and both air filters with no improvement.

Does anyone have a suggestion for anything else other than a trip to the shop.

 

[FULLPULL]

Let it cool down and check the water level . I would also check to see if the temp gauge is working right . It could be a themostat stuck closed. Once i made shure the cooling system is working right then you might check the fuel out again.

 

[RickB]

I have troubleshot tractors with those symptoms that turned out to have a large dose of gasoline mixed with the diesel fuel. Along with the power loss, they tend to get abnormally hot rather quickly.

 

[jinman]

How many hours are on the tractor? Did this just happen all at once? I'm thinking about carbon in the cylinders and dirty injectors, but this may not be the symptoms of that. I'd sure drain and replace the fuel as RickB suggested just to be sure.

 

[Ilikeurtractor]

I have troubleshot tractors with those symptoms that turned out to have a large dose of gasoline mixed with the diesel fuel. Along with the power loss, they tend to get abnormally hot rather quickly.

I just finished with a bout of what appeared to be some mixture of gasoline in the fuel tank. The tractor would run great when cold (in fact I am surprised it would run as good as it did) but after about 20 minutes it would bog down and stall out under any load or just stall unexpectedly. After changing/checking the fuel filter and checking flow from the tank to the pump I noticed that the spilled fuel was evaporating rather quickly with no residue left behind and I thought diesel fuel shouldn't do that. After changine the filter and purging the line the tractor again ran great until it fully warmed up and the same stalling happened again. After dumping the tank and filling with fresh diesel you could see the fuel filter housing was nice and green and not yellow like it was before the flush. The tractor runs great now when warm. It also missed pretty bad at high rpm when the gasoline was present.

I've always heard "old-timers" speak of "vapor lock" but I've never really experienced it and a friend of mine who owns a engine repair shop never did either over the past 15 years. I'm thinking that with gasoline present, it must begin to vaporize in the pump due to it's lower boiling point causing this mysterious "vapor lock". Just a theory...

I still have a problem distinguishing diesel and gasoline by smell alone but it sure seemed like what I drained off was gasoline.